


BURN Him!

by Reyn



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, M/M, Monty Python
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 16:36:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1864842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyn/pseuds/Reyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The villagers have decided Merlin is a sorcerer. And they would very much like to burn him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	BURN Him!

**Author's Note:**

> 110% inspired by [this](http://lilybells.tumblr.com/post/89701581987). Despite the very low rating, I tagged it as slash instead of friendship because it is intended to be slash instead of friendship as hinted in the original art.

Merlin stood with his shoulders slumped, allowing himself to be jostled by the crowd that gripped his arms as they approached the raised platform in the center of town.

"He’s a sorcerer! We found a sorcerer! Burn him! Burn the sorcerer!"

Gwaine, the local knight who had appeared out of the blue several weeks ago, would be at the platform, seeing as how he wasn’t at the two pubs the horde had dragged Merlin through in their hunt for a mediator of justice.

Today, however, Gwaine wasn’t alone. There was another man – a knight? – who was on the platform with him, in quiet discussion with both their arms crossed. The presence of this stately blond did nothing to deter the mob mentality.

“We found a sorcerer! We found a – BURN the sorcerer!! Burn him!”

Merlin did his best not to roll his eyes. Under the new king’s law, the witch hunts were technically supposed to be over. But that still didn’t stop the townspeople from keeping the black cat they found caged by the local church. No one was brave enough to kill the thing because it would hiss at anyone who approached it.

“You found a sorcerer?” Gwaine’s eyebrows went up in mock surprise.

All around Merlin, people gleefully nodded their heads, like small children looking for praise.

“May we burn him?” a woman near the front asked, sounding near breathless with excitement.

Arms remaining crossed, Gwaine took a step away from his companion to give the crowd his full attention. “And how do you know this person’s a sorcerer?”

“He looks like one!” someone shouted directly into Merlin’s ear, causing him to wince.

Gwaine briefly turned around to grin at the other knight. “Bring him forward!” he ordered.

A modicum of dread seeped through Merlin as hands shoved him to the edge of the platform.

“But I’m not – I’m not a sorcerer!” he tried to argue. Stumbling to the front of the crowd, he defiantly looked up at both Gwaine and his friend. His gaze lingered on the other man for a moment; he was far too clean. “I’m not a sorcerer!”

“Ehhh…” Gwaine seemed to weigh the truth of his words. “But you’re dressed as one.”

Merlin scowled with as much dignity as he could muster in his ridiculous getup. “They dressed me up like this!”

Gasps of outrage sounded around him.

“No!”

“We most certainly did not!”

“We didn’t! No!”

“This isn’t even my nose!” Merlin pointed out, determined to make the knights see the truth. “It’s a false one!”

The other knight moved past Gwaine to the very edge of the stage and crouched down. The majority of people fearfully stepped back, but Merlin stubbornly remained where he was.

This close, he couldn’t help but notice how handsome and  _clean_  the knight was. It made Merlin suspicious. No one short of extremely pompous nobility bothered to stay that clean. And yet here he was, clean, dressed as a warrior, and meddling in their town’s meager affairs. Who did this man think he was? The newly crowned King Arth—

Merlin’s jaw nearly dropped with the realization. There was absolutely nothing to back up his guess, but the likelihood of it being true was far too great to ignore. Rumor had it knights had been stationed in many of the small villages that were scattered throughout the edges of Camelot less than a week after the king’s coronation. It would only make sense for King Arthur to tour through where his knights were within the month after being crowned.

Merlin’s eyes went wide as the king’s hand reached out and placed a finger under the carrot that had been tied around Merlin’s nose and tilted it up to reveal a perfectly normal human nose.

The king’s mouth thinned, and while Merlin couldn’t be sure, he thought he saw the tiniest amount of amusement spark in his blue eyes before he turned to look at Gwaine. Merlin directed his attention to Gwaine as well, and found  _he_  had no problems with not hiding his entertainment over the whole thing.

“Well?” Gwaine asked the crowd at large.

Several pairs of feet shuffled.

“Well…we did do the nose.”

“ _Just_  the nose?” Gwaine challenged.

It took a moment for someone to admit “…And the hat. But he is a sorcerer!”

That got the mob going again with their chants of “Yeah!” and “Burn him!  _Burn_ the sorcerer!”

The king pivoted on his toes in his still-crouched position to stare incredulously out into the crowd. As the shouts continued, he stood, causing the noise to peter out meekly. No one else seemed to have realized who he was, despite his obvious authority over them.

“You seriously dressed him like this?” the king demanded.

“No!”

“Just a little!”

“No!

“Yes!”

“Yes.”

“…Yes.”

Gwaine stepped forward, putting a calming hand on his king’s shoulder. “What makes you think he’s a sorcerer?” he addressed the crowd at large.

“He turned me into a newt!” one man was quick to shout.

Merlin’s shoulders slumped and his eyes screwed shut. What Jim said was true, but in Merlin’s defense, they had been eight at the time and Jim was being a prat. He had also never done anything like that ever again out of fear of being put to death under the old king’s rule.

“A newt. Really.” The king both looked and sounded completely unimpressed as he stared Jim down.

“…I got better,” Jim stated, his eyes shifting to the side under the weight of the king’s gaze.

Merlin threw a glare in Jim’s direction. The idiot didn’t get better. Merlin’s mother forced him to change him back after Merlin came home crying with Jim stuffed in his pocket. She had told Jim he had chased her son up the roof and had fallen off, knocking himself unconscious. She then sent him home with a swift smack of the broom on his bottom when he didn’t scamper out the door fast enough.

“You know, sire, there are ways of telling whether he really is a sorcerer or not,” Gwaine advised, casually tucking his thumbs into his belt.

“Are there? Tell us! Tell us!” the crowd demanded, pushing forward eagerly.

Gwaine gave the crowd an indulging grin. “Alright. Tell me, what do you do with magic users?”

“BURN them!”

Gwaine winced, but nodded in acquiescence. “And what else can you burn apart from sorcerers?”

“MORE sorcerers!” one man shouted, only to be nudged in the ribs by the woman standing next to him.

The question was meant to be a thoughtful one, so the townspeople took a moment to try and find an intelligent answer.

“Wood?” Jim dared to guess, to which others eagerly agreed.

“Yes! Wood! Wood!”

“So!” Gwaine clapped his hands together and held them out. “Why do sorcerers burn?”

Merlin noticed the king roll his eyes so hard that his head followed the movement.

The crowd was silent for even longer this time, giving the subject a great deal of thought.

“Because…they’re…made of wood?”

King Arthur’s stare was completely incredulous as he turned his head to see who had come up with that answer.

Gwaine, on the other hand, simply blinked. “Okay, we can go with that. Good.”

Joyful titters and quiet congratulations rippled through the crowd.

“So, how do we tell if he’s made out of wood?” Gwaine then asked, sending Merlin a reassuring wink.

“Built a bridge out of him!” Jim yelled triumphantly, almost no thought going into his answer.

Merlin’s face screwed up, but before he could whirl around and demand what on _earth_  was wrong with Jim, King Arthur was doing it for him.

“Build a –  _what_? What are you even—no. No. We’re done.” The king turned to Gwaine. “Tell me you don’t play them like this every time they turn to you for advice.”

Gwaine’s mouth fell open in an attempt to hide his smile. “What? It’s not like I was going to let them actually burn the poor man! Come on, Arthur!”

But King Arthur was no longer listening, having jumped down from the platform before Merlin and ripped off his hat and carrot nose.

For a moment, the king said nothing, his gaze roving over Merlin’s face.

“Can you truly do magic?” he finally asked.

“…Er…” Merlin had no idea which answer to give. A lie to the face of a king, or the truth with a mob at his back. “Which answer is most likely to put me in your good graces, Your Majesty?”

The honorific was enough to do the trick. A smile broke out across King Arthur’s face and a heavy hand clapped Merlin on the shoulder. Despite his knees buckling, Merlin grinned back.

“You’re smart enough to figure out who I am, and yet dumb enough to get caught and trussed up by this bunch.” King Arthur wagged a finger at Merlin. “I might have use for you.”

The smile fell from Merlin’s face, but he was hardly in a position to protest as the king dragged him away from the confused crowd, calling for Sir Gwaine to follow.

“Do you think he’ll be willing to turn Percival into a rabbit?” Gwaine called out as he caught up. “I don’t see the harm in it so long as he can get better later on…”

Merlin’s lips pulled down even further into a frown, as he wondered just what he had gotten himself into.

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: nyerlin


End file.
